Jul 8, 2012

Oh my goodness me! So much I wanted to find the time to post about, but long story short- we're moving our family from California back to the UK this week! So so so much to sort out. We've been planning the move for nearly two months, but well, it turns out if you've been living in the same house for nearly seven years and you have the same sort of making stuff out of things lifestyle that we do, then there is a whooooole lot of sorting out that needs to be done before you can emigrate. I've been a little wild eyed and panicky the last couple of weeks and have been making a few too many jokes about throwing everything out on the lawn and setting fire to it, but as we get closer to the day we fly, it is actually coming together thank goodness!

There's been garage sales with friends and lemonade stands:

There's been plenty put on Craigslist. After a year of taking photos of Del in our rocking chair, we sold that a couple of days ago too.

There's been a lot of stuff to donate too. We're in luck that not far from us in San Francisco there is a fabulous school that does a lot of this open ended making and inventing and experimenting malarky with their students, so we've been up there with a couple of car loads (another couple to go this week too). Brightworks has been open for a year now and I hope they will grow and grow and allow many many more children to have this sort of experience, because it's lacking in the world today. Makes me happy to know that our tools and glue guns and soldering irons and low tech light table and paper and all manner of other makey things will be used and enjoyed some more by children. Here are the big 'uns enjoying the creations made by last week's group at Brightworks, when we popped in at the end of the day to drop things off. It was lovely to have Ellen and Justine be as excited about things like our elderly leaf blower as we were when we first picked it up at a garage sale and thought "Yes! Giant Bernoulli effect demo with a soccer ball!" Back to ping pong balls and hair dryers for us!

If you want to see more of what the kids at Brightworks get up to, Josh writes a blog daily for them with lots of great photos. They were building a harmonograph last week! Harmonographs are cool! We gave them the weights from ours, but their set up is much bigger and capable of more degrees of freedom, like the one at the Exploratorium. I'm kind of hoping that it will still be up when we call back next week to drop off the last of our tools and things.

So, things are winding down here. I'll still be posting here on Filth Wizardry in the future and I'll still be writing posts over at Alphamom.com every month once we get settled, but for the next few weeks we're going to be hopping about and kind of nomadic while we get rid of the last of our belongings here and then attempt to re-accumulate the important ones on the other side of the Atlantic. Oooh, and for those of you that are interested... After several years of staying up and being lovely and colouful, the tissue paper stained glass window came down really fast and easily without leaving any mess or damage to the window. Yay! Here's a pic I took with it all half peeled off. It was sad to see it go, but the peeling was fast and fun to do.

The kids dug up the purple potatoes yesterday and washed them off. I took apart the planter we made and painted, and the kid's lovely kindergarten teacher (who we will miss very much) has adopted the strawberry plants. Our neighbour took the twelve bags of soil over to his place for more veggie growing, so even in this rush and chaos it feels nice to have this community of help and mutual benefit surrounding us, with very little going to waste. Even the giant geoboard was taken in by my oldest's second grade teacher :)

What else, what else? Oh yes, totally awesome accidental timing on our part, but we are arriving in Manchester only a few days before they are holding a Manchester Mini Maker Faire! Yippie! Will we see any of you UK peeps there? It's Freeeeeee! My favourite price! I'm sad that we will unlikely get to all go to the Bay Area Maker Faire again any time soon though. We had such fun there the last three years. The kids were excited about it for weeks before hand this year.

Right, baby is awake and I've got to do more packing! There's so much more that I want to share. Maybe I will have time to write more when we're back in Wales and still living out of suitcases before any shipping arrives. Hope you're all having a good summer!

13 comments:

Oh Linds, I miss you already. But also happy for you being back near family and home (and food!). Have a safe, smooth journey and an easy transition for everyone! D has grown (well of course she has, but you know what I mean)!

oh! I was wondering if you had something up your sleeve, or if having three kids was just taking you away from blogging.. both, it looks like! Congratulations! I can't imagine a more stunning place on earth to live! I'm so happy your girls will get to grow up, at least for a while, in Wales! You can wave to Brenda Dayne for me.. - Jessica, Jericho, VT

Is it incredibly weird and stalkerish for me to be excited that you are moving so close to me?! Well, I say "close" but on the same island at least. We will definitely try to come, as we will be in Wales to visit my mother at the end of the month. She lives in a village near Denbigh, if you know of it....

Oh wow! I probably never would have met you while you lived in the US, but now chances are slightly less... I am so happy for your family, and thank goodness for the internet! It'll be like you never moved. :) xoox

Good luck as you move..We moved from US to India last year and know what it feels like, the sadness and excitement and OMG! feeling all rolled up as one....Am sure you all will land on your feet and pl.pl. pretty pl. keep writing...love your blog and posts...good luck!!

Subscribe Now.

e-mail subscription

Welcome!

This blog is for all my friends with preschoolers and all my kid's friends who are preschoolers.

I hope you find some inspiration or at least a chuckle or two from reading about our forrays into messy mayhem.

Content is Copyrighted.

It seems a shame that I have to say this, but it appears that it is required. Please do not use any of my images or writing without contacting me for permission.

I am completely happy for people to write about things that they have seen on this blog and link back to us, but reproducing my photographs and text without permission or credit is unacceptable.

Fangletronics

The man that I am affiliated with also has a blog. He loves to make stuff with and for our kids as well. His domain is more in the realms of electronics, but he makes other stuff too. Check out his electronic fangling over at Fangletronics.